How to Display Category and Subcategory Posts in WordPress?

When managing a WordPress website, organizing and displaying your content in a way that’s both user-friendly and SEO-optimized is essential for the success of your site. One of the most effective ways to do this is by categorizing and subcategorizing your posts. This helps your visitors easily navigate through your content, find the information they are looking for, and enhances your site’s structure, making it more attractive to search engines.

In this guide, we’ll take a detailed look at how to display category and subcategory posts on your WordPress site. Whether you are managing a blog, an eCommerce site, or any type of content-based website, understanding how to set up and display categories and subcategories will ensure your site is both organized and optimized.

Why You Should Display Category and Subcategory Posts

Before we get into the technical details, it’s important to understand the key reasons why you should display posts from specific categories and subcategories on your WordPress site. Organizing your posts this way benefits your site in several ways:

Enhanced User Experience: Categories and subcategories allow users to easily find related content. Imagine browsing a blog where each post is grouped under a specific topic. This logical organization means users don’t have to dig through endless posts to find what interests them.

Better Site Organization: When your content is properly categorized, visitors can easily navigate through your site’s structure. This clarity improves not only the user experience but also the overall layout and feel of your site.

SEO Benefits: Search engines like Google love well-organized websites. Displaying posts by category and subcategory makes it easier for search engines to index your content. This improves the SEO of your website because search engines can better understand the relationships between posts, categories, and subcategories, leading to higher rankings.

Improved Engagement: Displaying posts by category or subcategory encourages visitors to explore more related content. This leads to a lower bounce rate and longer sessions, both of which positively impact your website’s SEO.

Setting Up Categories in WordPress

The first step in displaying category and subcategory posts is to set up your categories. WordPress makes it easy to create, manage, and edit categories from your dashboard. Categories allow you to group similar content together, making your site more organized.

To start, you need to access the categories section in WordPress:

Go to your WordPress Dashboard.
Navigate to Posts > Categories.

In this section, you can create, edit, and manage all the categories for your website. Categories are usually broad topics that cover a range of posts, and they provide structure to your site.

When you create a new category, you can choose whether it should be a parent category or a subcategory. Parent categories are general and contain broad topics, while subcategories are more specific and fall under the parent categories.

Adding a New Category

Here’s how you add a new category to your WordPress site:

Name: Start by entering a name for your category (e.g., “Technology,” “Lifestyle,” or “News”).
Slug: The slug is the part of the URL that represents the category. By default, WordPress will generate a slug based on the category name, but you can customize it for SEO purposes (e.g., “tech” instead of “technology”).
Description: You can add a description for the category, though this is optional. It helps visitors understand the focus of the category and can be beneficial for SEO.
Parent Category: If this is a subcategory, you’ll need to select the parent category under which it will fall. For instance, you can create a subcategory called “Mobile Phones” under the parent category “Technology.”

Once you’ve filled out the details, click the Add New Category button to save your new category.

Managing Categories

After creating your categories, you can manage them by editing or deleting them. To do so, go back to the Posts > Categories page. You’ll see a list of all categories, and by hovering over each one, you’ll have options to edit or delete. Editing categories allows you to update the name, slug, or parent category.

Organizing Subcategories in WordPress

Subcategories are a great way to further break down your content into specific topics under a broader parent category. For example, under the parent category “Technology,” you might have subcategories such as “Smartphones,” “Laptops,” and “Gadgets.”

Adding Subcategories

To create subcategories in WordPress:

Go to Posts > Categories.
Under the Add New Category section, name your subcategory (e.g., “Smartphones”).
In the Parent Category dropdown menu, select the relevant parent category (e.g., “Technology”).

When you create a subcategory, it automatically becomes a part of its parent category. This creates a clear hierarchy for your content, making it easier for users to find specific topics.

Displaying Category and Subcategory Posts on Your Website

Once your categories and subcategories are set up, you’ll want to display posts from these categories in a way that is accessible to your users. There are several ways to display category and subcategory posts in WordPress.

Using Widgets to Display Categories

One of the easiest ways to display categories on your site is by using WordPress widgets. These widgets allow you to add categories to your site’s sidebar, footer, or any other widgetized area of your theme.

Here’s how to display category posts using widgets:

Go to Appearance > Widgets.
Find the Categories widget and drag it to the desired widget area (sidebar, footer, etc.).
You can choose to display categories as a dropdown list or as a plain list. You can also choose to display the post count next to each category name.

This method is ideal for showcasing categories on your sidebar, making it easy for users to navigate through your posts.

Category Pages

WordPress automatically generates category pages for each category you create. These pages display all posts belonging to that specific category. When a user clicks on a category link from your menu or sidebar, they are directed to a page showing all posts in that category.

If you want to customize how your category pages look, you can edit the category template file in your WordPress theme. You may also choose to use a page builder, such as Elementor or WPBakery, to design a custom layout for your category pages.

Displaying Posts from Subcategories

If you want to display posts from both parent categories and subcategories, there are several methods you can use to achieve this:

Custom Page Templates: If you have some knowledge of PHP, you can create a custom page template that queries posts from both the parent category and its subcategories. This allows you to display posts from multiple categories and subcategories on a single page.
Plugins for Displaying Posts from Subcategories: There are several WordPress plugins that allow you to easily display posts from both categories and subcategories. Plugins like Category Posts Widget and Content Views offer simple solutions for this task. These plugins give you the option to filter and display posts based on specific categories or subcategories.
Shortcodes: Many WordPress themes and plugins offer shortcodes that allow you to display posts from certain categories or subcategories on any page. For example, using a shortcode like [category-posts category="technology"] can display posts from the “Technology” category.

Customizing Category and Subcategory Post Layouts

Customizing how your posts are displayed on category and subcategory pages is a great way to make your site stand out and improve the user experience. WordPress provides several options for customizing these layouts.

Using Page Builders

Page builders such as Elementor, WPBakery, and the native block editor (Gutenberg) allow you to visually design your category pages without writing any code. With these tools, you can customize the layout, add widgets, and choose how the posts are displayed on the page.

For example, with Elementor:

Create a new page and drag in the Posts widget.
Filter the posts by category and adjust the layout to fit your WordPress website design. Elementor offers many pre-designed templates and customization options to make your posts look polished and professional.

Editing Category Templates

If you’re comfortable with PHP and theme customization, you can edit your WordPress theme’s category template to create a custom layout for your category and subcategory pages. WordPress uses a template file called category.php to display category pages. You can modify this file to change how posts are displayed, add custom styling, and more.

To create a custom layout for a specific category, you can create a custom template file named category-{slug}.php. Replace {slug} with the slug of your category, and WordPress will automatically use this custom template for that category.

Optimizing Category and Subcategory Pages for SEO

Properly optimizing your category and subcategory pages is essential for boosting your site’s search engine ranking. Here are some tips to optimize these pages for SEO:

Add Unique Descriptions: Every category page should have a unique description. This helps search engines understand the topic of the category and improves SEO.

Use SEO-Friendly Slugs: Ensure your category slugs are clear, short, and contain relevant keywords. A good slug should reflect the category’s content, for example, smartphones instead of category-1.

Use Internal Linking: Link to related categories and subcategories from within your posts. This helps search engines understand the relationships between your content and boosts your SEO.

Avoid Duplicate Content: Make sure that each category page has unique content. If multiple categories are too similar, it can result in duplicate content, which negatively impacts SEO.

Add Breadcrumbs: Breadcrumbs show users their location within your site’s hierarchy, and they also help search engines understand the structure of your website. You can add breadcrumbs to category and subcategory pages using plugins like Yoast SEO or Breadcrumb NavXT.

Conclusion

Displaying category and subcategory posts in WordPress is a powerful way to organize your site and enhance the user experience. By following the steps in this guide, you can easily create and display posts in categories and subcategories, making it easier for visitors to find what they’re looking for and improving your site’s SEO.

Whether you choose to use widgets, custom templates, or plugins, WordPress provides numerous options for displaying your content in an organized, visually appealing way. By customizing your category and subcategory layouts and optimizing them for SEO, you’ll be able to attract more visitors and improve your site’s search engine rankings.

At WebAllWays, we understand the importance of organizing your content for both users and SEO. If you need assistance setting up categories, subcategories, or improving your WordPress site’s SEO, our expert team is here to help. Contact us today to start enhancing your WordPress site!

By following these best practices for displaying category and subcategory posts, you’ll not only improve the overall structure of your website but also create a better experience for your users and search engines alike.

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